*chisa

Quick question, my arty and crafty friends - do you sell your arts or crafts online, and if so how do you package and mail them? The closest thing I've done was sending off two kiriban prizes, which I sent in regular envelopes as letters (the keychains were packaged nicely inside though!), but one of them reached *Kycha in Mexico something like a month and a half later, which wouldn't really be acceptable if I had been charging for it.

I wouldn't feel comfortable sending clay items just in an envelope either... I'm thinking of putting them in small giftboxes and padded envelopes, but that will add to the postage cost and I'm not sure of the best way to do it.

Lend me your advice! Particularly if you're in Australia, cursed as I am with expensive international postage ;-;






~pencafe is a manga/doujinshi artists club founded by a group of dedicated artists in Perth, Western Australia.

I got back from Japan last week, and had a blast! I'm still in the process of writing it up (knowing myself I'll probably never actually finish it), but the photos that I've gone through so far can be seen at [link]

I have over 3000 photos to go through (went with the if-i-take-lots-of-photos-of-the-same-thing-at-least-one-might-be-good approach), so more will be posted up on Flickr as I go through them. I'll put a bunch of the best ones together for a deviation at some point too.

EDIT: Done going through photos! [link]






~pencafe is a manga/doujinshi artists club founded by a group of dedicated artists in Perth, Western Australia.

I'm off to Japan for 2 weeks! Been planning this for a few months, and now myself and some members of PenCafe are flying out tonight. I'm taking my awesome new camera (plus my little one as a backup), so look forward to many many photos when I return.






~pencafe is a manga/doujinshi artists club founded by a group of dedicated artists in Perth, Western Australia.

This time next week I'll be sitting on a plane for Japan! Problem is I'm sick of all my music and need something new to listen to on the plane and for the rest of the 2 week trip. Any suggestions for travel music? I'm looking into some J-Rock since it seems to go with the trip, but don't really know a lot about Japanese music beyond anime soundtracks.


Had to post this site up because it's so freaking awesome - Gorilla Artfare is a group sketchblog with 100 or so artists, who post their 'sketches' and 'doodles' and 'speedpaints' and make me feel incredibly small and incredily happy at the same time. There's a really big variety of media and styles, from realistic to cartoony to figure drawing to 3d to conceptual... it's just an RSS feed full of happiness for me. Go see.


Early, but I'll be drumming for my school's troupe from tomorrow night almost up until I leave for Japan, so this is as close to the actual date I can get. If you see any lions around don't forget to feed them lots of money for good luck






~pencafe is a manga/doujinshi artists club founded by a group of dedicated artists in Perth, Western Australia.

If you can’t tell from the crappy photo above, I have a fancy new DSLR camera! I’ve had a sort of vague interest in photography for a while now, especially with quite a number of my friends being very into it and producing some amazing work. I still love my little point-and-shoot that my friends gave me for my 21st birthday, but sometimes it’s nice to sacrifice convenience for extra creative control.

On the recommendations of well… everyone based on my budget and general photography noobishness, I ended up getting a Canon 400D in a twin lens kit. With all the associated bits and pieces it ended up more spendy than I had originally thought, but I did manage to wrangle the price down a little and get a free bag, as well as getting it all duty free since I’m going to Japan soon. Interestingly the duty free store seemed to have similar or lower prices than all the camera shops that I went to even if you aren’t buying it duty free, so it worked out quite well for me.

I still don’t really know how to use it - the last time I used an SLR was when I was 14 with our highschool’s (film) cameras, and even then I don’t remember setting many manual options. I’ve been reading up enough to get a general idea but it feels like something that requires a bit of messing around with to really get the hang of. I’ve just been messing around with settings and taking photos of things around my house (most of which turned out terribly with my experimenting) and hopefully I’ll be able to talk one of my more experienced photographer friends to take me out somewhere and show me how it all works.

If anyone has any tips or reading material for me please let me know!






~pencafe is a manga/doujinshi artists club founded by a group of dedicated artists in Perth, Western Australia.